The value of transparency, demonstrated

Here's an Open Company example from real life. We upgraded our JIRA installation on Friday. After we did, David noticed that JIRA's notification emails had different From: addresses. (They used to be from the person who made the change, now they appeared to come from JIRA itself.) This was sort of disappointing: we had liked the old way. So what to do? Call customer service? File a bug and wiat to hear back? Bitch and moan? Badmouth Atlassian on the web?

Instead, since Atlassian is an open company, I decided to check things out for myself. I went to the release notes for that version of JIRA to see if the mail behaviour had been changed deliberately. It hadn't. Then, right below the release notes, I saw a list of bugs that had already been found in the new release. (Convenient!) And in that list was the bug about the changed mail addresses. It was already marked as fixed, and scheduled to be released in the very next version. So I got the information, my complaint was answered, and I left happy — all without wasting any of Atlassian's time and money or spending a second on the phone. To me, that's perfect customer service.